RABAT, Morocco (AP) — The official Moroccan news agency says the north African country's honorary consul in Aleppo, Syria, has been killed by armed men as he left a hotel in the city.

The MAP agency, citing unspecified relatives of the honorary consul, reported Wednesday that Mohamed Alae Eddinne was killed the previous evening after armed men in a taxi attacked him among a group of his friends.

MAP says another person was also killed during the attack, without elaborating. The report said Eddinne, a Syrian national, was born in 1961 and had been the honorary consul of Morocco since 2001. Such posts are largely ceremonial.

Morocco is preparing to host next Wednesday a meeting of the Friends of Syria, an alliance of countries backing the rebels battling Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime.